The truth is unpleasant and therefore unpopular:
Humans have invented a social "reality" that denies reality itself.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Death Metal Underground Newsletter 12/9-12/15

Death Metal Underground

Newsletter 12/9-12/15

Because Metal Is Art

The importance of experiencing local metal

Some time ago, Jon Wild
relayed a local news write-up about Amarillo-based death metal
band Abolishment of Flesh. I am a part of Death Metal
Underground, and I live in Amarillo. I’ve gotten to know these
folks, and I thought I’d offer a follow up. I can say without
reservation that they are as great as the best of people one
finds anywhere. Since moving here 14 years ago, I’ve found I had
trouble finding a niche. The ostensibly Christian veneer of this
region fades rather quickly when it becomes known that one does
not practice some variety (or in my case, no variety) of faith.
That sense of alienation grows when one prefers Pentagram CDs to
Pentacostal services. So outside the people I knew from work, I
really didn’t associate much with the local population. As
metalhead and loner from way back, this arrangement suited me
just fine. Solitude trumps solicitousness any day, and twice on
Sunday.

How to “sing” death metal — an interview with Lane Taylor,
vocal coach

Every death metal listener
has at some point heard some variation on the statement that
death metal bands are untalented, and that instead of
mellifluous singing, there’s some guy “just standing there
screaming” (that’s from my Mom, about 25 years ago).

Despite three decades of these vocals, they remain vastly
misunderstood. Leaving aside for a moment the question of their
purpose and effect, there’s also the technical question of how
they are produced. And how does this compare to regular
“sing-a-long” vocals?

Grindcore as a genre started
out incredibly strong but unfortunately has grown stale with
copycat bands and hipsters. By remembering those who made the
genre great, we may inspire the genre to create great works once
more.

An early runner in the grindcore genre, Florida’s Assück were
one of the first bands to fuse grindcore’s rhythmic intensity
and youthful energy with elements of the phrasal and percussive
riffing of death metal. The combination would later become
“deathgrind.” Assück additionally was staffed by remarkably
proficient musicians.

What are Sadistic Metal
Reviews? Heavy metal is either art, or like the rest it’s a
product to make sad people feel better about their empty and
pointless lives. Brutal honesty is all that separates us from
that abyss. Remember, tears are a sign that you’ve really
reached people…

The resurgence of Black
Sabbath following the success of their new album 13 presents an
ironic success when compared with the more substantial legacy of
their earlier work. Without the first five albums, metal as we
now know it would not exist. And on one album in particular,
Black Sabbath laid the groundwork for three subgenres — stoner
metal, thrash metal and doom metal — such that future
generations could pick up the hint and fully develop these new
alloys of the raw metal that Black Sabbath forged forty years
ago.

Sammath combines the dark
melodic understructure of black metal with the type of charging
full-ahead death metal that Fallen Christ or Angelcorpse
pioneered (which might descend from Morbid Angel’s “Thy Kingdom
Come”). At this speed, the riff-salad approach of more
traditional death metal would become a muddle, so the band
focuses on a few ripping riffs per song and uses song structure
deviations to incorporate entirely different riffs to create
dialogue with the main verse-chorus pair and the Slayer-style
introduction/transition riffs that accompany it.

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